LIBRETTO (Daniel F Aitken)
She: My God! My husband!
He: No!
She: Yes!
He: You don’t say!
She: But I do, for you see. Darling,
Such is the inevitable intimacy of marriage
that it is almost impossible not to recognise one’s husband
in whatever condition one finds him
Asleep or awake, sober or sizzled, dead or alive.
He: Which is it this time, honey?
She: Dead if you ask me.
Coronach
He: Let me see.
Now are his intercostals all relaxed? His pulmonary lobes have ceased to fill.
His myocardium no more contracts.
And in both auricle and ventricle. Diastole and systole are still.
His stagnant serum, rich in red corpuscles,
no longer seeps through his capillaries.
Bringing the haemoglobin to his muscles. His temperature has fallen ten degrees.
And rigour mortis creeps above his knees.
Already on his soft somatic tissue, strange saprophytic organisms dine.
Soon annelids will mate there and have issue,
While through foramina in skull and spine, bellis perennis roots will intertwine.
She: Darling?
He: Yes?
She: Does that mean that he is dead?
He: Yes.
She: Really and truly?
He: Yes.
She: As a door nail?
He: Indubitably
Duet
She: How nice it is when husbands die just when they’re wanted to!
So nice it is I can’t think why there are so few of them who try, so very, very few who do!
He: For ‘tis a melancholy fact that husbands very seldom act with even a modicum of fact in this important item.
She: And though they know they should have gone long since to their oblivion,
the brutes go living on …
Both: and on, ad infinitum! And so it’s nice when husbands die just when one wants them to.
She: And that my sweetypie is why I think we’re lucky you and I.
He: I think we’re lucky too. And that my sweetypie is why I think we’re lucky you and I.
Both: How nice it is when husbands die just when one wants them to.
She: Darling!
He: Yes?
She: How did he die?
He: Hum…
She: How did he die?
He: Ha…
She: How did he die?
He: He did with his boots on.
She: Don’t be stupid! That’s not what I mean!
He: What did you mean?
She: I meant how, how did he die?
He: Why ask me? How should I know?
She: You know so much, darling. Besides, you examined the corpse!
He: Certainly I examined the corpse; and I ascertained that it was dead.
She: As a door nail!
He: Moreover, I cannot deny that this fact is a source of considerable satisfaction to me.
She: Me too.
He: Darling!
She: Still it would be nice to know how he died.
He: Surely it’s enough to know that he is dead,
Without having to look an absolutely priceless gift horse in the mouth out of sheer idle curiosity.
How like a woman!
She: Darling? Relax! You can trust me. Listen!
Air
She: Any nice girl will tell you that deep in her heart of hearts
Her secret soul despises the gentlemanly Arts.
For the nicest are always the earthy and I don’t mean stick-in-the mud.
And the earthy are all for action. And the earthy don’t mind blood.
He: There is no blood
She: In that case he cannot have been stabbed with a silent knife or riddled by screaming bullets!
He must have been strangled I suppose. Or perhaps “dispatched” with a blunt instrument.
He: There is no contusion.
She: No blood? No bruise? No blackening of the skin? I know, POISON!
Relax! You can trust me. Listen.
Air (reprise)
She: Any nice girl will tell you that under her snow-white breast
Lies a coal-black soul that dotes on the things she’s supposed to detest.
For toughness can be attractive and cavemen have their charm
And a spot of quiet murder does a girl no harm.
He: What did you say?
She: You heard!
He: MURDER? Murder is an ugly word.
She: Would homicide be any better?
He: NO!
She: Then why not call a spade a spade?
He: Don’t be foolish, Darling.
It’s not the description that matters, but the object,
Not the nomenclature but the occurrence,
Not the equation, but the phenomenon.
Not the term, but the event.
She: In this case the “event” is tolerably acceptable
Don’t you think, darling?
He: Everything about you is utterly delectable.
I simply dote on your duffle coat
I enthuse over your narrow trews,
To say nothing of your bobby socks, Darling, and flat-heeled shoes
She: That’s better! Go on!
He: Everything about you is utterly delectable
Your hair sprouting in a horse’s tail
Your lips wine washed and pale, where the taste of garlic lingers
And the nicotine stains, darling, on your brown bright fingers.
She: And now, what are we going to do with the body?
He: The body?
She: That one. The remains, the victim, the corpus delicti?
You clever boy!
He: Clever? I’m not clever at all, I’m stupid. Come here!
She: Yes?
He: How did you know he was poisoned?
How did you know it was not a heart attack?
She: Me? I know nothing.
He: Do you remember nothing?
She: Those are pearls that were his eyes.
He: WHAT! You are not a toxicologist.
Yet you take one look at a cadaver and recognise the symptoms of curare poisoning at a glance.
The white flesh, the staring eyes, the flabby skin
No! Don’t answer…
Meditation
He: It is not unknown in Nature for the female to kill her spouse.
The rat will do it sometimes though never the tick or the louse.
She: What are you trying to say?
He: Occasional misadventures are reported from the zoo.
But on the whole it’s a practice that vertebrates eschew.
She: What are you getting at?
He: On the other hand, behaviour that vertebrates think odd
May be the merest common-place to the female arthropod
Romance
He: Consider the conduct of the garden spider.
While her husband is still engaged in his attentions
Like Clytemnestra she entangles him in a web of silk
While she charges her sharp chelicerae wish poison
So that as soon as he is finished to her satisfaction
She ends his pain
While the nightingale sings in the bloody wood
Jug jug jug, jug jug jug jug.
So rudely slain.
She: Are you suggesting by any chance that I did it?
He: You had the means. You had the motive. You had the opportunity.
She: Had I?
He: Particularly, the motive.
She: You think so?
He: Naturally, it’s all very flattering.
She: Is it?
He: Not every man has a girlfriend at once so enterprising
So devoted, and so efficient. And yet –
She: What?
He: I never did like spiders!
She: You have the nerve to stand there
And talk about lycosids, tarantulas and black widows,
When all the time you know and I know
He: What do we know?
She: Shall I whisper it in your ear, darling?
Shall I utter it in a high clear voice?
Shall I shout it on the house-tops?
Shall I scream?
He: That’s up to you, Darling
She: You killed my HUSBAND!
He: Me?
She: You!
He: You say you love me, yet you think I’m a murderer
She: I thought that you were strong and brave
And primitive and passionate, instead of which
He: You accuse me of a miserable low-down poisonous rat alley crime
She: Why not? You tried to make out I did it!
He: And didn’t you?
She: No!
He: Neither did I!
Flyting Song
She: You miserable little grasshopper.
He: You hasty shrieking magpie.
She: You slug!
He: You she-wolf!
She: You worm!
He: You hyena!
She: You cockroach, you snake in the grass!
He: You termagant…wild old screech owl!
You insatiable tigress!
She: You liver fluke! You louse, you tick…you maggot!
He: You scorpion!
She: You abominable black beetle!
He: You praying mantis!
It: *laughs*…
She: Why are you laughing?
It: You look so funny.
He: Who?
It: Both of you.
He: We thought you were dead.
It: I am.
She: How do you know?
It: Because I committed suicide.
All: Ha ha ha ha ha ha …
She: What have you got to laugh at?
It: You don’t know the half of it – eh?
But I shall tell you.
I have committed suicide.
So far, so good.
But, where do you think the poison came from… eh?
The curare?
The Indian arrow poison?
From your laborat’ry, my friend.
Your finger-prints are on the label.
Oh yes – I thought of that!
And yours, my dear,
Are on the glass from which I drank it!
He: WHERE?
She: WHERE?
It: Hidden, both hidden.
The tell-tale bottle and the tell-tale glass
Hidden where you can’t find them.
Clever…eh?
No one will find them.
No one will touch them.
No one will wipe them clean.
Until the police arrive…
And go over the whole place…
With a small tooth-comb.
Then questions…
What will you answer – eh?
What will you say at the trial?
Means…motive…opportunity…and finger-prints
Gentlemen of the jury…
You may think – you may consider.
Evidence.
Guilty, my lord.
Have you anything to say?
Nothing.
Again, nothing.
Nothing will come of nothing
The black cap.
The condemned cell.
Waiting…
Waiting…
The long drop.
That’s the police now I think..
Bless you, my children.
I’ll be seeing you…